The Child Who Changed Them, page 11
Before he started spinning visions of himself as a part of their obviously close little family. Fitting in. Helping them, too, anywhere he could.
And forgot that he wasn’t jumping in anymore.
Because when he didn’t look before he leaped, inevitably, people got hurt.
Because this time, he couldn’t afford to rush after what he thought he wanted.
Glancing at Elaina’s belly, he knew that everything had changed.
He didn’t need to rush. Or push.
He already had what he most wanted. And it was going to be another seven months before he got to do much more than stand on the sidelines and wait.
* * *
The lunch meeting with Cassie and Wood was all civilized and positive, as their response had been when she stopped for coffee early that morning, didn’t have coffee, and told them she was pregnant. They were so supportive, excited, a tad bit worried about her unusual situation, afraid she’d be hurt and had Elaina yearning for a perfect world. She wanted to believe everyone was deeply happy, feeling real affection, not just surface politeness. Wanted to know that it would last forever. The four adults, baby Alan and the little one she and Greg were adding to the mix.
She and Greg signed a lease agreement. There’d been a second there when Cassie had asked for an end date, but when she’d quickly offered to leave it open-ended, with either party able to terminate the lease with one month’s written notice, everyone relaxed again. Chatted.
When there was so much not being said.
No one mentioned Peter. Or the fact that her baby would now not be biologically related to Wood or sweet baby Alan.
The fact that that still mattered to her shook her a bit. Like she didn’t believe Wood and Cassie and Alan were family without the biology?
It had all just been so neat and clean—her plan to atone for her part in Peter’s death, something no one knew about. And to become a legitimate part of the only family she had left in the world.
As she went through the next couple of days, the next week, she alternated between feeling more alive than she had in...memory. And struggling not to shut herself off from the world again. To love from afar.
She’d hurt people. What if she hurt Greg? Or the baby?
And she didn’t feel worthy of the happiness that was starting to infiltrate little parts of her day...to hang there in a tantalizing little wisp of hope as she opened her eyes each morning. She was afraid to grasp it. Couldn’t bear the thought of reaching for it and having it snatched away.
And yet there it was, dogging her steps, daring her to take the chance.
Greg had moved in while she was at work. She’d left an empty garage and returned to find his car there and the door at the end of the hall shut. He’d had the day off.
She’d come home to find a magnetic notepad on the refrigerator, though, and her cupboards stuffed with more food than she’d had in them since Wood left. A note on the pad told her he’d meet her at the ultrasound.
And also had a curious message... “#2.” She pondered that on and off for the next couple of days, smiling at how the man seemed to occupy mind space even when he wasn’t around. He was doing a couple of night rotations.
She’d had an email from him at work, a response to the most recent scan she’d done on Brooklyn. This was the third week in a row in which the hospital had administered a dose of medicine, instructing its staff and her mother to not give the little girl another dose at home. And the scans were showing the same healthy results. Different from Brooklyn’s other scans. When they knew for sure Brooklyn received her medication in the hospital, she was a much happier and emotionally stable child with no stomach issues. When they couldn’t prove that she’d received it at home, she struggled.
The next step would be something that Brooklyn’s pediatrician and Social Services would determine. Her job was to step away. To accept ultimately not knowing, and having no control over, the end result.
Up until Brooklyn’s case, she’d been thankful for that aspect of what she did. Being able to help where she could, offer all of the compassion in her heart, and then...withdrawing.
As she drove to the ultrasound on Friday, she started to see a common theme in her life.
Withdrawal.
Since her parents died, she’d been doing enough to live life, but always taking baby steps backward.
The realization disturbed her. Disappointed her.
Was she wasting the life her parents had given her?
Telling herself the only baby steps she wanted in her life now were the ones the little human being growing inside her would learn to take, she parked and looked for Greg’s shiny blue car, spotting it in the far back of the lot.
As though he’d been watching for her, he got out just as she pulled in, and was approaching her car by the time she was out of it. She had to stand there and wait. It was the polite thing to do.
He looked so incredibly good, familiar and sexy and...solid, in his jeans and short-sleeved pullover shirt. Enjoying the sight was a natural part of being alive.
As was the smile on her face as she walked toward him.
She liked him. Had always liked him. There was nothing wrong with that.
“You ready for this?” he asked as he reached her side and they walked toward the door.
Elaina wasn’t sure she was ready for anything.
But she wasn’t withdrawing from it, either.
She had a baby to live for.
Chapter Twelve
Elaina was a good patient, Greg noted as he stood to the side, watching as she followed the technician’s instructions, sliding up on the table, lifting her shirt, lowering her waistband. A lot of doctors weren’t good patients—himself included.
The fact that Elaina was didn’t surprise him. She was kind and gracious and good at everything she set out to do, from what he could see.
Her home—their home, at least for now—wasn’t just clean, it also smelled fresh. Good. Like a spring day, not like the antiseptic that greeted him at his office door each day. And the decor, while understated, was warm. Welcoming. Every single piece, from a small collection of decorative angels in various mediums set up on a china hutch, to a painted wooden sign with floral design and words that proclaimed that family lived there, seemed deliberately chosen to embody peace and love. Even the colors, soft oranges, reds, golds, wrapped him in a feeling of acceptance.
Of belonging to something good.
All of which he thought about to distract himself from the sight of smooth skin that he knew tasted slightly salty with a hint of sweet and a belly button he’d slid his tongue into more times than he could count. He got hard just thinking about how putting his tongue there made her hips squirm.
Less than a minute in the room and his penis was standing at attention. In a pair of jeans. Pulling the edge of his shirt as low as it would go, he looked around at the instruments in the room, the monitor. The camera that the technician held. The gel she was squeezing onto Elaina’s belly.
And, God help him, thought about the gel Elaina had used to massage him right where he ached at the moment.
He could hear the technician telling them what she’d be doing, was doing, pointing to the monitor, and he had to wonder if she’d checked Elaina’s chart and if she knew that she was talking to a radiologist and an MD.
The woman lowered her camera to the gel on Elaina’s belly, sliding it around, and suddenly, Greg had no focus at all except the monitor, assessing every single shape of shadow and light. Noting at once that all of the formations were exactly as they should be. After that first bit of confirmation, he glanced at Elaina, meaning to get right back to the screen he was studying, but he couldn’t look away from the slight flush on Elaina’s cheeks, the uplifted tilt of lips that were trembling, and the glisten in her eyes.
She’d never been more beautiful to him.
And more inaccessible, either.
* * *
“I know it’s silly, but I’m going to make it my text message notification sound. I’m calling it my heartbeat song.” Phone in hand, tapping and thumb-typing, Elaina walked with Greg through the parking lot toward her car, frenetic, needing to pee and unable to slow down. She had to get back to work. But she just couldn’t stop listening to the steady rhythm that she and Greg had just heard moments before. One he’d thankfully recorded on his phone and had already sent to her.
She had a heart, other than her own, beating inside of her.
She felt combustible. Ready to explode. With joy. Fear. Awe. Disbelief. She just couldn’t come down from that high.
They had photo scans, too. Pictures she could read like a book.
An incredible, perfect, beautiful book.
Grabbing the strip of photos out of the satchel on her shoulder, she held them up, a long string of still shots. “Crazy how these seem to be entirely different from every imaging shot I’ve ever taken,” she said, and then gave them to him. “You want to take them back to the house?” And before giving him a chance to respond, said, “No, wait, I’ll keep them here, in my satchel.”
She went back to dealing with her phone. Her fingers fumbling as she tried to type. She had her own “Heartbeat Song.” There was no going back. No slowing down.
She didn’t want to go back or slow down, either.
“It was something, huh?” Greg asked as she reached her car and he didn’t branch off to his.
Glancing up from her phone, meeting his gaze for the first time since she’d entered the ultrasound room, she had a reply ready on her lips. It froze. And then evaporated. That golden glint in his eyes...would their baby have it, too?
“Yeah, it was something.” She managed to echo his statement back at him. In lieu of the plethora of feelings zooming through her.
Holding her gaze, he nodded. And it was as if he knew what she wasn’t saying.
Because he wasn’t saying it, either.
They’d walked out side by side. He was right there. Close enough that she could smell his musky scent—a mixture of soap and deodorant—and as their eyes met, she knew what was going to happen.
Their bodies were having a physical conversation of their own. That half-slumberous look in his eye, the way he was studying her lips, and the way her tongue immediately popped out and wet them as she started to lean in. To breathe a huge sigh at the thought of relief from the emotions coursing through her.
Then he stepped back. Blinking. And the man who stared back at her was closed off. A doctor at a bedside. A committee member heading up a table of professionals.
A man who saved lives for a living.
One who’d just saved her from herself.
And she had to be grateful.
* * *
No matter how many laps he swam in the pool in the dark and the chill, Greg couldn’t get the heat out of his body. A baby was on the way. He’d heard the heartbeat every day for the past three days. Replaying it over and over. And he needed his family in order. Needed to provide.
To do.
He’d never been a sit-around-and-wait type of guy. He was always the one who studied puzzles and found the solutions.
But the solution to the puzzle before him seemed to be nonexistent. How did he and Elaina go from being lovers to parents without anything personal growing between them?
How did he learn things about her, become a part of her life, without getting involved?
And yet, for the sake of his child, he had to stay free and clear from anything that could turn bad. And every single time he’d been involved with a woman, it had eventually gone wrong. The sex stuff, he was great at.
More than that...he seemed to have trouble distinguishing between love and lust. Need and want. Forever and for now.
Or, more accurately, he tried to create forever, need and love out of lust, want and for now. And let himself get used up in the process.
And when something like that ended, it didn’t leave the type of atmosphere where one could give a child a secure, happy, loving life.
He’d lost count of the number of times he’d swum the length of the pool, something he’d done each of the three nights since the day he’d heard his child’s heartbeat. He would get off work at midnight, drive to his parking place in Elaina’s garage, avoid looking at the door that led into her suite where she’d told him she’d stay, leaving him the house when he got home, and, instead of showering, opt for a cold swim. After a twelve-hour shift in the ED, he was still thrumming with adrenaline.
But the excess energy wasn’t all due to work.
He was adjusting to a life that had drastically changed course. He had his plan. Just had to get through the twists and turns he hadn’t foreseen, and those he had, too, to end up where he needed to be in his life.
Dragging himself out of the pool when he figured he’d done enough to acquire a need for sleep—and the ability to get there—Greg wrapped the towel he’d brought out with him around his waist and let himself quietly back inside the dining room door.
He was surprised to see Elaina standing in front of the mounted microwave. She didn’t say anything, as though maybe she thought he wouldn’t notice her.
Fat chance of that. He could smell that she’d walked through the kitchen hours after she’d been there. Heard her walk through the living room to the kitchen every single morning—with his door shut and white noise ocean sounds playing from his smart speaker.
Unlike him with his rotations, she worked a semiregular shift. Regular in that she had the same hours every week—semi in that she picked up a lot of extras and adjusted for weekend duty twice a month. She had to be at work early in the morning. And was still in the critical three-month miscarriage portion of her pregnancy. He worried about her overdoing, though, medically, he knew that her working should pose no danger.
“You okay?” he asked, glad for the darkness that kept his suddenly upright and only loosely covered groin concealed.
“Just getting some decaffeinated tea with lavender—Dr. Miller said that I could have chamomile as long as I watch the strength, don’t steep it long and don’t do it every night, but there’s no danger with lavender, so I’m...um...making some tea with lavender.”
All the time he’d known her, he’d only heard her ramble once before. In the parking lot after the ultrasound. Was she struggling as much as he was?
Could they talk about it?
Should they?
Certainly not while he was standing there dripping on her tile floor. Wearing only a towel and loose-fitting trunks that weren’t going to keep his body contained if he stood there much longer, adjusting to the gloom, noticing the short silk robe she had on, reminding him exactly what was underneath—or not.
“Are you feeling okay?” He was a doctor and she was carrying his child. He had to know.
“Fine. Just having trouble sleeping and I have to be at work in six hours.”
Satisfied, he turned away from her and toward the space that he’d begun to think of as his. As far as he knew, she hadn’t even been down that hallway since the day he’d moved in. “Good night,” he said, eager to make his escape before he made a mistake.
“I didn’t know you were out there...when I came out. I heard you get home, heard you come in, but thought you were in your room.”
He turned halfway back—enough that he could look in her direction, not enough that she could see him head-on. Because the wrong “head” was definitely “on.”
“Elaina, this is your home. You’re free to move about as you please and certainly don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
The microwave beeped and she took out her cup. She dropped a tea bag into it and dipped it up and down. “Is this your first night in the pool?”
“No.” But it was probably going to be his last.
At least until he could get his severe attraction to her better under control. If he didn’t know so well what he was missing...if his body didn’t know exactly what hers would do to him...
But it did. And he had to get down that hall and behind his door.
“Can I ask you something?”
Now? He wanted to let out a little whine but said, “Of course.” Concentrate. Sutures. Blood. Broken bones.
“What’s #2?”
Seriously? She was playing childhood games with him? Number one was pee and...
“On your note,” she continued before he completely humiliated himself. “You said #2.”
Ahhh. He smiled. “The dog,” he said. “I vote for #2 on your list.”
Her smile lit up the gloom. He could see a hint of teeth, see the glistening as her lips moved. And turned without thinking. “He’s a poodle mix, so no shedding and no dander, in case the baby’s allergic. And small enough that we won’t have to worry about him knocking the baby over, and it says he’s good with kids.”
She’d come closer. And was staring downward.
Thinking of broken bones hadn’t had enough time to do its job. He’d barely made it to considering a simple fracture before she’d grabbed his attention back.
“And he’s only two, so we’ll have a lot of good years with him,” he continued talking, though he could hear the strain in his voice, and didn’t have much hope she’d missed it. “You’ll...” he corrected. “You’ll have a lot of good years with him.”
Cup in hand, she’d stopped walking. “You’re planning to remain an active part of our child’s life,” she said softly, sounding more like herself even as he heard himself sounding less and less composed. “So you’ll be around him, too. And...thank you. I’ll call the shelter in the morning.”
So that was it. She could see the evidence of his severe desire for her and she was going to pretend it wasn’t there?
